I noticed Evolution saves an int in the country column of the tables:
modx_user_attributes
modx_web_user_attributes
This would be an ok to do since then you can localize/translate those names. So far so good, *but* there appears to be no table it references to at all.
I checked WebloginPE and it hardcoded all of the english country names into it. This is not nice. The manager backend nicely shows localized names for the active language. I suspect it uses a flat file for reference.
Can I use the MODx api to lookup a country name?
EDIT: I discovered some flat files with localized names in manager\includes\lang\country. The manager appears to be using these. Still I wonder whether there is an API call to help me out.